“Hush!” cried Van, delighted to catch Percy interrupting, while Polly made haste to say, “Oh! this is different. It’s only the tops she wanted cut off;” and Ben said, “Wait, and hear the rest of the story.”
“And so the men with the axes did exactly as Lucy Ann told them; and pretty soon all the trees were snipped off even, and just alike.
“‘Now go and bring a board big enough to set on the tops of all those trees,’ she commanded, ‘and lay it on them, for I’m going to have a garden up there.’”
“Oh, oh, oh!” screamed the Whitneys delightedly.
“And in just ten minutes by Lucy Ann’s little diamond watch in her belt, it”—
“O Polly! did Lucy Ann have a watch all made of diamonds?” asked Percy. “Ladies have them, but girls don’t.”
“Lucy Ann had one, anyway,” said Polly in her most decisive fashion; “and hers was just one big diamond, with the minute hand and the hour hand set in the middle”—
“Oh!” gasped Ben, tumbling back in his seat.
“And in just ten minutes,” repeated Polly, “by that little diamond watch stuck in her belt, the board was up on top of all those trees; and then she commanded the men to cover it all over with dirt, ever so deep; and after that she made them build some cunning little steps leading up to it,—two pairs of steps, ‘because I never mean to go down the same pair I come up,’ she said to herself; and in just half an hour from the time she began to think about it, there was her garden all done. And her father peeped out of the window all the time, and he called her mother, and all the people in the house; and every one took a window, and watched to see how the work went on.”
“I should think they’d want to,” said Ben with another gasp.